Category Archives: Social comment

Privacy, Social comment

Outing predatory law enforcement in Washington

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(Washington, the state. Obviously. Is there another place named Washington that comes to mind when one says the word? If so, I’m not aware of it. I refuse to say ‘Washington state.’ Let other Washingtons, if any exist, add qualifiers.)

This is my farewell gift to the people of the beautiful, diverse state in which I spent thirty-nine years. I plan to update it as I learn more, so if you have experiences to share, please comment.

While it’s no secret that plenty of American small towns depend for a percentage of their revenue on police issuing ridiculous traffic tickets to tourists, Washington seems to be one of the worst in this regard. The Speed Trap Exchange is a great idea, but poorly maintained and organized. Really too bad.

My definition of a ridiculous traffic ticket is one issued for a paltry (<3 mph) violation of a stupidly low speed limit, or for deceptive signage that tends to assure that otherwise safe and careful drivers stand a fair chance to speed by innocent error. Being stopped for 10 mph over the limit on the freeway is not predatory or ridiculous: accept your ticket and pay your fine. Same for failing to heed a school zone, unless they have conveniently concealed the sign.

Town/city (County):

Bingen/White Salmon (Klickitat): quaint sailboarding heaven with a long reputation for persnickety and predatory ticketing.

Black Diamond (King): a fast-growing former rurality with great views of Mt. Rainier–and police who live to issue tickets for going 2 mph over the limit.

Brier (Snohomish): a tiny suburb of Lynnwood/Edmonds with about three police officers and no noteworthy crime. Favorite sport: radaring people on the way down a steep hill for a few mph over the limit.

Cle Elum (Kittitas): a freeway commercial loop town in a gorgeous setting–until you get ticketed for going 1 mph over the limit.

Clyde Hill (King): a wealthy western suburb of Bellevue near the SR 520 bridge with a very long reputation for eagerness to ticket. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that your Camry was likelier to be ticketed than your Mercedes, but I’m thinking it.

Colfax (Whitman): a wheat town at a major crossroads leading to WSU. An otherwise inoffensive place with a plodding speed limit for which you can expect a ticket for even 1-2 mph over the limit. Infamous as Washington’s worst predatory speed trap town. The very worst, most obvious, most blatant, most unapologetic. If you speed through Colfax, either you hail from afar and know no better, or you don’t mind tickets. It is so notorious that TV commentators joke about it on the air during Coug football games.

Naselle (Pacific): part of the whole Pacific County ticket-crazy zone. They won’t bother to ticket the massive RV slowing everyone down in violation of the law, but if you’re doing 58 in a 55, expect to be stopped–State Patrol and county deputies both have this place on lockdown.

Oak Harbor (Island): the primary town of Whidbey Island, but a combination of frequent speed limit changes and reputed different treatment for local addresses vs. tourists make all of Whidbey a ticket minefield. Side note: I once got to be part of completely legal high-speed chases against the Oak Harbor Police in one of the greatest ROTC field training exercises ever (one you couldn’t even consider doing today). They were really annoyed when we won the engagement and the E&E. Helps to be advised by Special Forces, nearly all with Vietnam combat patches.

Raymond (Pacific): Nirvana played their first gig here, and probably got a ticket for playing 2 mph over the limit. One of those towns where it looks like you’re out of town and on the highway again, but until you see a new speed limit sign, you aren’t. Police have nothing better to do than cite Seattleites headed toward Long Beach.

South Bend (Pacific): another joyous center of Pacific County’s predatory enforcement. Watch for signs like a hawk. If you have Oregon tags, or worse, California, you’re even more screwed.

West Richland (Benton): a sprawling suburb of Tri-Cities, and home to its most predatory law enforcement. Speed limits make little sense, unless the purpose is to enable officers to ticket you because, feeling bad about the locals stacked up behind you who are outraged at your respect for their city’s law, you foolishly yielded to their tailgating and decided to speed. Just pull off and let them by, especially if there are five or more–that law will be enforced for the first time on the very day you violate it.

Thank you, Washington, for thirty-nine years. When I first came, you treated me so abominably I believed I would hate you for all my days, and leave you the instant life drew me away, swearing never to return in peace.

Luckily, it got better. Your natives included my best man, some of the finest friends I’ve ever known, people who gave me opportunities and lessons, neighbors most people would ford a river of steaming sewage to have. In the end, on balance, the good far outweighed the horrors, no matter how early and harmful those were.

On balance, in years between the second Nixon and second Obama administrations, you wrought me more weal than woe. I will miss your emerald flag, your silhouette state highway signs, and your delicate curves. I was never a Washingtonian, but I hope what I gave back to you over two generations showed you my full gratitude.

I’ll visit.

Entertainment and music, Human relations, Social comment

Big Brother 15: CBS’s gigantic disconnect

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If you were ever tempted to believe that ‘reality’ TV accurately reflected the events that occurred during taping, this should fix that wagon.

In case you have better taste than I do, Big Brother 15 is the current season of CBS’ reality’ franchise, in which some 14-18 ‘houseguests’ take up residence in a sound stage mocked up to resemble a large ‘house.’ They get little to no news from the outside world except in the most serious cases, such as 9/11, when one contestant had a relative in the WTC (happily, the relative was uninjured). Each week, contestants compete to become Head of Household, which has perks, including nominating others for a live eviction vote. There are more twists and curves involved than a debate with my wife, but that’s the game in a nutshell. It lasts between two and three months, with taped shows airing twice weekly and a once-weekly live show. Live camera feeds are available for subscription, which makes it impossible for CBS to cover up the full story. Even when they cut all the feeds, contestants are sure to discuss events spontaneously after the fact.

Over the years, there has been plenty of drama on the sound stage. With dozens of cameras and microphones inside the residential portion of the sound stage, CBS has a vast surplus of footage available per week, compressible into about an hour and a half of TV time. You’d expect a lot to fall through the cracks, but you’d like to expect that you got a representative sample of how people acted.

Nothing of the kind.

We’ve had a few near-fistfights, a lot of tears, some sexual activity, plenty of nudity, shouting matches, outright delusions, meltdowns, ejections, a knife held on someone, vandalism, and quite a few objectionable comments. We got to see most of that unfold, most of the time, on some level–it was the sort of TV the producers love. (By the way, the production company is called Endemol. Who came up with that name? It sounds like a medication you’d hear about on pharmercials. “I was always listless and depressed. My spleen seemed out of whack. I had lost my sex drive and had a craving for raw leeks. So, despite never having heard of it before, I asked my doctor about Endemol.”)

This season, it’s gotten bad. One contestant, Aaryn from Texas, has behaved like a narcissistic ‘mean girl,’ throwing out ethnic and homophobic remarks that have earned her the nickname ‘Aryan’ from recappers. Another, Gina Marie from Staten Oiland, hasn’t been much better. Contestants have sarcastically ordered Helen, the affable Asian mom and political consultant from Illinois, to ‘go cook some rice.’ They’ve mocked Candice, a resilient African American speech therapist from Houston, for the size of her derrière (which isn’t even that substantial). Every season of BB has one visibly gay man; sometimes they also cast a lesbian, though it’s always a lipstick lesbian. This season’s visibly gay contestant is Andy, a witty public speaking professor from Illinois. It didn’t take the bigots long to locate the word ‘faggot.’ And none of the racism and homophobia is any secret to anyone in the house; Howard, a sincere, ripped African American youth counselor from Mississippi, has said on the live feeds that he has to bottle up most of what he feels in order to get through the game. I’m impressed that he can. There have also been anti-Semitic slurs. The more of this I learn, the more I respect the minorities in the sound stage, and the more I want them to win simply because their path to victory will be that much harder, thus more well deserved. I want to see them celebrate as, one by one, the bigots get booted.

And this brings us to the gigantic disconnect: the TV show has shown none of the bigotry. I suspect CBS was told by its advertising sponsors: “Do it and we’re done with you.” It’s not that the word isn’t out. Gina Marie (pageant production) and Aryan (modeling) have already been sacked by their real-world employers; the press release from Gina Marie’s employer was corrosive. Thanks to the live feeds, and those who recap them (my brain would suffer irreparable harm), the whole nation knows or can know the truth. Yet CBS refuses to show it, even though people using vile words like ‘nigger’ or ‘faggot’ would certainly spike ratings as people would watch in outrage. What cannot be hidden is Julie Chen’s obvious loathing for the cast. I’ve never felt much sympathy for Chen until now. I can only try to imagine how she felt when Aryan described Helen as the first Asian she’d ever met who wasn’t doing her nails.

Yeah. It’s that bad.

There’s a movement to have the bigots kicked off the show, and of course the usual “We Hate PC” counter-movement. Here’s the thing: if CBS did boot them, they’d have to field awkward questions about why they failed to televise the bigotry to begin with. That would prove to even the most gullible that what they see is not representative of reality. I myself don’t think the bigots should be ejected from the game, because then we wouldn’t get the joy of watching them crushed. I want the targets of their abuse to have the satisfaction and material rewards of well-earned victory. I also believe that it’s important for us to see that, while these attitudes may be in decline, they are not dead, and they still need to be countered and rejected by honest women and men. I do think it’s dishonest of Endemol and CBS not to show some of the despicable behavior, so that the casual viewing public remains hoodwinked, and so that they can duck some of the controversy–and, if my analysis is correct, keep the ad dollars.

Reality TV is unreal. Never forget that–or if you didn’t grasp it, know it now.

Update: one of my favorite blogs, angry asian man, seems to see this as I do.

Social comment, Technology

A service to the technologically unaware

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It’s pretty common for me to see someone on Facebook, or wherever, complaining that this or that suddenly stopped working. Or reverted back to an older setting or version, or doesn’t work as advertised at all, even though they looked it up in the help. It’s pretty frustrating for them, because they don’t see how that could be. “It’s supposed to work! What idiot designed this?” Some of the reactions seem to personalize it, as if someone is deliberately messing with them; others are just woe-is-me of some sort.

I’m patient with it unless/until they try to get me to ‘fix it’ for them, or more or less demand that I (who used to work with computers, thus I must know All Things Technical) take personal responsibility for it. That tripped your BS meter, unless you have ever worked at supporting computer users. They usually want someone to bitch at for their frustration, and the helper/tech will do. Somehow, it’s the helper’s fault that someone else created a flawed thing. This is why a lot of people who could perhaps help you, choose not to. They’ve been through that too many times. Those who have not yet learned, or for whom the validation of successful problem-solving is too alluring to resist, keep volunteering assistance.

The words I hated most, and that immediately marked a user as not grasping the situation, were “I don’t see why you don’t just FIX it.” If that were feasible, lady, and if it were that easy, I would. Your great-nephew would–he’d just overwrite everything you have, break everything you want to use by doing an easy reinstall, and then vanish when it came time to help you get your “e-mail working with your printer, and your software downloading in your drive, and your Works chart colors back the way you want them again.” Or whatever other way in which you imagined that solving computer problems was exactly the same as car repair. (That quoted list of complaints was a fairly typical sample. Most people don’t know what the tech terms actually mean, so they misuse them to try and sound more technical, which makes them in fact sound pretty dumb. Kind of like the non-Spanish speaker who responds to Spanish by saying ‘El grande pantaloons’ or ‘buenos nachos.’)

So I’m going to present some generalized realities that a lot of people don’t grasp. Words of ultimate futility: “But it shouldn’t be this way!” Many things should be and are not, or should not be and are. I don’t care how it should be, because I don’t deal in ‘should.’ I deal in ‘will’ and ‘won’t,’ and ‘can’ or ‘can’t.’ I can, however, tell you how it is. You’d be less annoyed if you knew. Or you might be more annoyed–but at least you’d be less mystified. It isn’t always just you. Sometimes, the situation is just unpleasant. It might help to know, at the very least, that it’s not always your fault.

1) Any large, complex piece of software, be it Facebook, your new Massive Ultracarnage III game, or MS Word, always has major imperfections. There are ways in which the documentation is simply wrong. There are features that are broken from day one. The help file cannot possibly keep up with the reality; no one’s willing to pay that many tech writers.

2) Most major ‘upgrades’ are net backward movements, adding some features but mostly moving the same stuff around so you have to look for it all again. It’s not your imagination. You’re not crazy. That’s reality.

3) Most major changes are a series of additional pieces bolted on, rather than rethinking the whole base concept. Thus, most highly mature software is like a passenger car that was evolved from a tricycle, and deep down inside it, still has that tricycle, which is no longer needed functionally, but it’s too much headache to remove, plus removing it would break everything else, thus the whole thing would have to be rethought and re-engineered as a car from the start. They won’t do that very often.

4) If software is online, such as a website, and is very popular, its information and code are stored across large amounts of computers and storage, with some redundancy and ability to share the load if one of them has a problem. This means that your reality will not always be the reality of everyone else. “It’s working fine for me, sorry.” That’s usually temporary, as they are gradually fixing something, upgrading something, or propagating some change about the system.

5) Sometimes, when something on a website is messed up, or an ‘upgrade’ turns out to be broken, or data is trashed, the easy fix is to revert to a fallback copy known to be good. This means that changes in the meantime were lost. It might be many or might be few, depending on how many people used that and how long it took to realize that the new Doodad had a memory leak that threatened some dire consequence.

6) Information systems management is a lot like generaling a battle. You make some hard decisions on the fly based on the best information you have at the time, and you try to avoid heavy casualties, but stuff happens. Expecting everything to go right most of the time flies in the face of this reality. It’s rather a miracle any of it goes right, ever, for any sort of bearable price.

7) All changes are beta-tested on live users. You are the guinea pig. “Why don’t they test it beforehand?” They do, but what they consider beta-testing is not comprehensive because no one can think of ways to creatively break software like several million people. They don’t have several million in-house testers and can’t get them. The only real way to find what’s truly messed up is to give it to the public and let said public work its magic by diversity of use.

In theory, beta-testing should mean ironing out the major kinks before inflicting change on users. In reality, users are the beta testers. They hand you the car and let you do with it what you want. Some people will drive normally. Some will drag race. Some will repeatedly slam on the brakes to see how long it takes for them to fail. Some will set up ramps and attempt stunt jumps. Some will refuse to drive it over 10 mph. Some will wrap it around the first tree they see. Some will put it on a grease rack and start altering it. What is sure: if there is a flaw, someone will turn it up, either by accident or by using the car in a way it was never intended. Software works like this.

A few years back, I remember, there was a WWII operational game that inventoried each unit down to number of operational vehicles and weapons. Amazingly detailed, and players could create their own scenarios to simulate nearly any battle. There was an enormous argument when someone set up a company of trucks and pitted it against a unit consisting of one Tiger tank (which, in reality, could have taken out twelve trucks without even firing its main gun; just run them over or machinegun them). The trucks always won. You can’t imagine the bitchfight that followed, with people screaming how unrealistic the game was. Never mind that the objective of the game was to simulate divisions and corps moving against each other; this microexample ‘proved’ the game was not realistic. Here’s what’s unrealistic: any competent officer or sergeant–hell, a private–attacking a heavy tank with a bunch of trucks in the first place. The developer (Norm Koger, an exceptionally capable fellow) used the term ‘pathologically strange scenarios,’ and he was right. But the point: someone was going to try that, and claim it to be a Major Issue.

8) In information systems management, sometimes so much goes wrong at once that–like medical staff after a catastrophe–the technical people must prioritize. It’s not that your issue doesn’t deserve fixing. It’s that there may well be five more major issues that you don’t know about, that affect hundreds of thousands of users, whereas yours only seems to affect a few thousand. They will triage the eternal process by number of users impacted, severity, and so on. This means there are numerous small problems that will simply never be fixed because they will never be important enough. Repair and testing resources are finite. If you have one of the small problems, you may just be screwed. Since there is always someone with at least a broken leg or a severed artery, your nagging hamstring pull may not get any attention; you may just have to work around it as best you can. Sucks when that happens.

9) Why are nearly all upgrades actually downgrades, or unimportant lateral movement at the very best, as described in 2)? Because you, the user, really aren’t the priority. You never have been. You are dealing with the programmer mentality, which prefers to create the new rather than fix the old. The programmer mentality is abysmal at designing user interfaces–which are the way users interact with the system–because the programmer doesn’t care that much how many steps the path requires, simply that the path eventually leads there. Watch the way a Facebook game devolves and you’ll have an example. It will keep bolting on more and more stuff, in this case to generate revenue, and because programmers like to keep creating the new, but hate going back to rebuild the old. What if most users like it the way it is and don’t want any changes (they haven’t even adjusted fully to the last batch)? Not the programmers’ problem, because the users aren’t what drives the thinking. They can never come out and say that, of course; it’s a shibboleth.

If programmers went back and made everything work correctly, really did it right, they’d get bored. They don’t like doing that. Programming involves more artistry and creativity than most people imagine; creators gotta create. Perhaps more importantly, if they didn’t keep coming up with new stuff they imagined would improve the system, there’d be less need for programmers, with all problems fixed and nothing new planned. Programmers like to have jobs too, even if their job is in fact to make your experience worse. It’s their mortgage payment vs. your happiness; the former wins.

10) Ideal software on a large scale is problematic to create, even starting fresh. In theory, developers would come up with a concept, build it, test it, find all the major flaws, release it, learn about a few that slipped through the cracks, fix those and be done, and move on to re-imagining the next major version. It’s never like that. That takes a long time, and with nothing new being released, there is less new revenue. At some point, everyone who wants it has bought it or pirated it. What happens is that developers wing it a lot faster, and let the world find the flaws, which take longer to fix–and which delay starting on something new.

11) Thousands and millions of users all have computers that differ as much as one human from another. A few humans can’t stand cilantro, for example; it tastes like soap to them. The rest of us can’t taste the soapy stuff, and we keep dunking our chips in the salsa. There is probably someone mortally allergic to kumquats, will go into convulsions if they even touch one. Some people are allergic to everything. We vary.

Even if the hardware were all the same, a different mix of software is loaded on each, and most software does something to the operating system when installed. This means it is inevitable that some user will have some deadly combination of hardware and software, duplicated in only a few cases, that happens to mess with the one piece a given system must have. There is no practical way to troubleshoot or fix that, unless it’s widespread enough to trace to a single item (usually a specific piece of hardware, like a video card, or perhaps even a specific version of that hardware’s accompanying software drivers). Why do the tech people always ask you for a full list of what hardware you have? This is why.

For example: I bought one of the Diablo games. Everyone else loved the new game and said it was brilliant. It hard locked my machine after a few minutes. If this were very widespread, everyone else wouldn’t have loved the game. It probably had to do with some video or sound driver, which I could have upgraded and hoped for the best. Or I could just decide it wasn’t that important, which is what happened. Same with one of the SimCity games: about ten minutes in, just as it was getting interesting, it crashed. Not for most people, who thought it was the best version ever. When you’re in that situation, if you’re in a small minority, don’t count on a solution. It rarely comes.

12) A fresh restart solves a lot of problems, often enough to always do it. Clear the cache, power cycle the modem, reboot the machine, then immediately try what isn’t working and see if it fails again. This is why techs always have you do this: it solves enough problems that it’s nearly always worth a shot. No failure is diagnostic unless it can be reliably repeated from a fresh start, because some failures are a result of an extended, deteriorating operating system session which something else caused to begin deteriorating.

If you can start fresh twice and get the same failure, reliably, you can reproduce it. If you really want it fixed, being able to reproduce it on command gives the propellerheads something to work with–because there is, then, a way to know when it is addressed. Magic words to tech support: “I can reproduce the failure every time from a complete fresh start.” They can sink their teeth into that.

So, you have problems. You always will, here and there. Using a computer is like driving down a highway that has some frost heaves and potholes. Some you will miss, either because you never drove that stretch of road, or because of your alertness. Some you’ll hit. Some will flat a tire or crack an axle. The people who make the software are mainly concerned that most people eventually get there, even if they have to take detours. This may mean that some roads just keep deteriorating, because they are less traveled, and because it was more important to fix a major bridge that was about to fall into a river.

You can still be annoyed about this if it helps you, but the annoyance isn’t going to change reality. But maybe if you at least understand why it’s this way, you’ll be able to guess whether the problem is worth trying to report or troubleshoot, or whether you’re better off just living with it, working around it, or rethinking how important it is to you. Expecting perfect computing is like expecting a perfect round of golf every time, something not even tour pros achieve. Their success is mainly judged by how few major mistakes they make, and that is also true of computing–for developers as much as users.

Investing, Social comment

Let’s share a victory

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Some of you might know that I’ve got serious knee trouble, for which I’m undergoing rather unpleasant but helpful physical therapy. We have GEHA as an insurance provider, and they contract with an outfit called Orthonet to review treatment programs and approve care. My PT set up a plan of eight visits, which seemed logical to me: let’s do this for a month and see where we are.

I soon got a letter from Orthonet: they approved only seven visits. This mystified me. What was the logic? I called GEHA, who basically said I’d have to call Orthonet. I did this. The minion could not provide a responsive answer to this question: “Okay. My PT says I need eight visits. Your case manager evidently disagrees, thinking seven are sufficient. Explain the logic, please. What about my case prompted this case manager, who–unlike my PT–has not actually seen either of my knees, to decide that seven were all that were necessary?”

Of course, the minion served up the standard vaguenesses and horse hockey that are designed to baffle, confuse and frustrate people into just giving up. Evidently that’s their job: to get people to give up and accept less care. I advised him that none of that had answered my question, and that if he couldn’t answer it, then I wanted to speak to the case manager. This evidently was a very irregular request: to speak to the actual individual who decided that his wisdom was superior to that of the medical professional. I insisted.

Somehow, they got a case manager–if not my own case manager–on the line. He spoke in the rapid “I’m way too busy for this sort of thing” tones of someone who also has the power to take action and needs not to be slathered in protracted conversation. I asked him the same question. He said it was a good one, and that he didn’t know why. Very quickly, he agreed to resubmit the review recommending the eighth visit. There was zero fight. I thanked him and the conversation ended, goal achieved.

Now let us deconstruct the reality of all this, because while it would seem I should be very happy with Orthonet for giving me what I wanted so quickly, that is really not so.

  • My PT recommended a course of treatment. The minion’s first response to my question had hinted that they basically always approved one less of whatever was requested.
  • As a reflex, on the logic that Orthonet is contracted by GEHA to save it GEHA money, they therefore approved one less visit. The average person, less obstinate or confrontational than myself, would simply accept the reduced care. One presumes that if my providers expected this, they’d request nine visits so that I’d get eight.
  • Orthonet’s first line of defense against pests of my ilk is to have their toll-free line answered by people with minimal power, whose work is to spout gobbledygook. Most people are nice and do not like to be confrontational, and also won’t ask such a blunt question; they also won’t insist on a real answer. This should get rid of most people. Money saved. They will get less care, of course, but that’s the whole idea.
  • If however one remains politely insistent (thus not giving the minion a valid excuse to hang up), one will be routed to someone with authentic power of decision. This person is extremely busy and will take the easiest route, which is to concede. Okay, we lost this one, but that’s okay, we expect to lose one out of twenty. Nineteen savings, one loss, duh, winning.

Why I’m not satisfied should be fairly obvious: in the first place, a lot of my time was wasted. In the second, the only logic in play was money-saving. If the physical therapist had asked for sixteen sessions, they’d have authorized perhaps fourteen or fifteen. Had the therapist requested four sessions, they’d authorize three. There was no medical value in play. So yeah, I won a victory of sorts.

Some situations are just designed to screw you. It’s not personal. They screw everyone.

A long time ago, in a small Washington county seat, I took my first driver’s test. I’d heard that everyone who went to this testing venue flunked the first time. It was so with me. For example, he directed me to parallel park in a space without markers and with a parked vehicle only on one side, and ordered me to treat the space as if there were a car behind. He could thus automatically fail me on that part, on the grounds that he could say that my parking effort required room that would not actually have been available. All he needed was to find a few other fails, and I’d have to come back later and pay for a new test. That was his racket: keeping his job by keeping testing volume and payments high. Of course, being sixteen, I didn’t really have options, which he also knew.

Our greatest social parasites are not those we support with our tax dollars. They are those who automatically put people to more trouble and expense than is necessary in the hope/belief/knowledge that most people will just swallow it. Some people wonder why I fight things like Facebook profiling, web trackers, debit cards and nearly anything Google comes up with. This is why. I can’t make anyone else fight it alongside me. I can only make sure that the fight with me–if only me–costs the other side something.

Well, that and I can make sure the world hears about this Orthonet outfit, and its actual impact.

Homeownership, Social comment, Technology

A Craigslist salesbabble and rantbabble glossary

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With the large amount of commerce and commentary that emanate from CL of late, some trends of vocabulary have arisen to accompany it. Some already existed, but some are morphing or being invented. Language is dangerous on the propaganda principle, in that when the word is repeated often enough, the human mind inclines to take it more at face value. Glance at a Red Robin menu sometime, for example, and count the uses of ‘zesty,’ ‘hearty’ and ‘tangy.’ None of those really mean anything, except that they’re trying to convince you the food is good. Yet the overall impression you take from the reading is one of energy and strong flavor, simply because of the words they repeated.

Therefore, someone has to step up and translate the CL salesbabble and rantbabble. This is the work of writers, who are supposed to contribute some of their understanding for the common good. Just plug in the real meaning for the term, and read the ad that way, and you are good to go.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or ***** or any other sprayed punctuation: “Mostly hype, move on”

Action figure: “Toy I outgrew.”

Affordable: “Desperate.”

ANYTHING IN ALL CAPS: “Uninteresting; this is my way of trying to get your attention”

As is: “Pretty sure it’s got problems.”

Athletic: “I walked last week from my car to the grocery store. And parked far away!”

BBW: “Really fat.”

Bizop: “Scam.”

Build your brand: “Marketing is all on you.”

Collectible: “No one collects this.”

Cute: “Someone’s wife once liked it.”

Detail ‘orientated’: “Can spell, unlike me.”

Distinctive: “In atrocious taste.”

Flexible hours: “At our beck and call.”

Forever home: “Hoping the crockpot won’t come into play.”

Franklin Mint: “Worthless.”

Full service: “I don’t return phone calls.”

Gorgeous: “Meh.”

‘Grammer natzi’s’: “Literate individuals.”

Great find: “Wasn’t such a great find for me, so I want it gone.”

Great view: “You can see some buildings and a farm.”

Highly collectible: “No one ever did collect this.”

Homebody: “Don’t really like doing anything.”

HP: “Highly Prone…to problems.”

HWP: “Somewhat fat.”

Inkjet: “Money sink.”

Landscaping: “You must pester me if you plan to get me to do actual work and accept your money.”

Limited edition: “Didn’t sell to begin with. Except to me.”

Make offer: “I know it’s worth very little. I hope someone will offer me too much.”

Management trainee: “Powerless toady abused by customers and manager alike.”

McAfee: “I bought a real virus scanner, so I want to dump this useless one on some sucker.”

MLM: “Much Lucre for Me.”

Must see: “Bores most people.”

Needs repair: “In ruins.”

No frame: “Wasn’t even worth framing.”

Nonprofit: “Pay sucks.”

Or best offer: “I’m desperate. Lowball me. I’ll guilt you, then I’ll take it.”

People-oriented: “Must deal well with assholes.”

Price is firm: “I know it’s not worth what I’m asking.”

Rare: “I have no idea how rare it is.”

Runs good: “Has other problems you will discover later.”

Rustic: “Plain.”

Section 8: “Get your concealed weapons permit first.”

Seafood processor: “Trawler slave.”

Shabby chic: “Old junk.”

Socially conscious: “Cheap.”

Spacious: “Will hold all your crap.”

Timeshare: “I can’t believe I fell for that.”

Vintage: “At least twenty years old (for electronics, five years).”

Works great: “Will probably work long enough for you not to sue me in small claims.”

Worth at least twice that: “Worth half that, if even that much.”

‘Your a moran/looser’: “I lack all sense of comic irony.”

Privacy, Social comment, Technology

How the Google data hydra begins to die

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I think I watched a head of the Google data hydra wither and die today–the second one in two weeks. It’s hard to predict the future, but this may have meant something for someone besides me.

What it is

Let’s define what this ‘data hydra’ is all about, and why I call it that. Here’s what Google does. It provides a very useful free service or software product to the public. The idea is to entrench that service to the point where it becomes a need, not a want. Here’s the catch: each of these services will phone home to Google on what you did, helping them to assemble a multi-faceted portrait of you for marketing purposes. Google can then sell advertising targeted at you. Some of it is camouflaged as stuff other than advertising.

You may not resent this. If you do, it doesn’t bother me; the choice is very individual. But if you do not resent it at all, the rest of this post may be of marginal interest. You may consider that it’s a voluntary business transaction in which we use the service in return for fair compensation of surrendering some data for their use. If so, you probably don’t think this whole subject is worth discussing. Okay.

The data hydra has tentacles. These fasten into your system and begin to report back. The best known are cookies, little data bits that can report back to Google from many non-Google sites. I don’t know what all they report, but I know that they want to remain on your machine between sessions. Less known are web trackers, little beacons that also may be on many non-Google sites. Thousands of web advertising companies use them, and most of you have no idea they are there. However, if you wonder how Facebook knows you just went to a site pertaining to travel to Bali, that’s how. Google, of course, uses them as ubiquitously as possible. A tentacle that presents Google with the richest harvest is actual applications and helpers that you download. If the thing is on the web, there are at least ways for you to refuse to let it work on your machine. If it’s on your machine, it can do whatever it wants, phone home any time it cares to. The most common would be Google Chrome (web browser; what’s better positioned to listen at your e-keyhole?) and Google Earth (surface view software). I’ve always loved it when people claimed that Google Chrome gave them better privacy. If anyone honestly believes that a Google application running on his or her computer will not make 100% sure that it has a backdoor saying ‘Google is the exception; Google gets everything’, that’s fine. You’re in the position of Native Americans signing treaties, pretty much, but have fun.

Everyone has to decide where his or her front line is, if there is to be one, in the battle with the data hydra. Or just do what most people do: say “screw it, who cares.”

My battle fronts

If you don’t use anything by Google, you still don’t shut out the data hydra, though Google would have to go further to profit from knowing what you read. I block all Google things that I can on as many sites as I can, selectively enabling some when it’s easier than fighting. Thus, everything from Google presents a decision: will I use it, and what will I tolerate in order to use it?

Google Chrome: will not use. I assume that if I use that, all other privacy efforts are defeated.

Google Earth: tried, uninstalled. Novelty application, but clunky and just isn’t very necessary.

Google Accounts: a key feature of all Google tracking. In their ideal world, you would always be logged into your Google account. Thus, as often as possible, they deny you features unless you login to a Google Account, in which case you are offered a richer experience. I have one, but I don’t use it very often.

Google Search: have long used, blocking all the cookies. Also have several browser add-ins to lie to it about my location, spam it with spurious searches, and otherwise feed it mountains of baloney. Still useful to me, though they are gradually making it worse, and driving me toward others.

Google Documents: probably the smartest trick Google ever pulled, with the potential to make Microsoft irrelevant. Offers cloud computing: ‘here, let us store your data; it will never get lost, and you or anyone you permit can access it anywhere.’ Of course, the big draw here is to make you login to a Google Account. Sometimes, they demand this just to view the document. In most cases, they demand it if you want to modify it. I fear this one the most, because due to my line of work, it’s possible I could be forced into doing Google’s bidding in order to get paid. Employers don’t care about your data hydra concerns–they do what’s easy for them, and if you don’t like it, find another job.

Google Groups: Google decided to simply swallow Usenet whole. Google Groups allow a fairly clunky form of collaboration and discussion, which can be as private as you wish. They were the cause of me creating a Google Account, because my RPG group was run by someone who embraced Google whatever and I wanted to be able to communicate and participate. However, I always hated this in silence, and I’ll admit that (years later) when they waited until I missed a session, turned it into a behind-the-back bitchfest about me, and kicked me out by phone call without the slightest phase of ‘here is what bothers us, we will face you honestly and give you opportunity to change your style,’ one of my consolations was that I never had to use the Google Group again. Easily dispensed with, unless your esoteric interest happens to exist in a Google Group.

Google Translate: will translate to and from some thirty languages, with passable accuracy. I have used it mostly as a dictionary. Bing has one that seems just as good. Recently, Google has been periodically breaking some of its features for people who block as many tentacles as I do. Today, I deleted GT from my toolbar. I wanted to do something, Google was refusing to load GT, and I decided I’d had enough.

Google News: aggregates world and local news, very handy for avoiding mainstream media’s ‘here is the story we order you to care about today’ manipulation. How do they decide what’s local to you? They look at your IP and figure out where you are. GN was the first of my Google uses to begin periodically breaking itself unless I gave it what it wanted. Happily, news aggregators are everywhere. I deleted the toolbar button several days ago, tired of dealing with ‘will it work for me today, or not?’. I don’t like its replacement’s layout as well, but it always works for me, and it gets my current location wrong enough that I can bear it.

Gmail: will not use. Obviously.

Google Toolbar: will not use, same reasons as Chrome. I’d rather comprise my own toolbar.

Google Maps: not needed. Alternatives are just as good.

Google Books: useful now and then in research, long as I can limit what they get.

Google everything else: not relevant to my world.

When you think about it, deciding to resist Google is a formidable task. Look at all that stuff. I don’t even want to use Google Anything ever again if I can help it, and they have even me caving in on some of it. By now, surely, you understand where they get all this information. Most of us give it to them because it’s easier than resisting. Basically, Google is like the annoying guy who has some redeeming features, who keeps subtly pressuring the woman for sex. The woman finally decides to get it over with, since he’s not that gross and she sort of likes him in some ways, and gives in. Google: analogous to the grey area between actual date rape and authentic consensuality.

What happened, then

Last week, I decided that if Google wanted to make News a crapshoot for me, I just didn’t need their version. Today, the same thing happened with Translate. Two data hydra heads, rendered meaningless for me, battle over. And it makes me wonder, because Google is sort of like a giant mudflow with enough weight behind it to seep into just about anything that isn’t solid, watertight and strong. It will continue to push: to offer new services, but exact a privacy toll for their use. When someone decides they just don’t need that particular Google service, Google loses a product. You are the product. You generate evidence of preferences, thus you create Google’s merchandise. Less use of anything from Google is what Google rightly fears. Thus, the day someone just stops using a piece of Google, a data hydra head is vanquished.

Google should pay us

So should Facebook. The default assumption, never questioned by most of us, is that Facebook and Google services represent fair trades for our marketing data. There are a lot of ways to look at this. “That was the deal, and you took it, so don’t renege. By refusing them all possible information, you’re stealing from them.” I guess if you see the world that way, most of my blog posts probably don’t interest you. My own way is simple: while Google and Facebook do the above, and probably specify their rights to do the above deep in the bowels of legalese-laced Terms of Service, they have never frankly disclosed all the data they mine, how they mine it, and how much money each of us makes them. They just kinda sorta did it the backdoor way. That’s not forthright business, so I reserve the right to be less than forthright myself. Telling the truth to deceptive people is a fool’s game; we are entitled to deceive the deceptive.

If they offered us real money for our data, telling us up front what they’d collect, that’d be different in my eyes. They won’t, naturally, because they don’t need to. We’ll give it away to them as the barter toll on the information highway, and since it doesn’t come out of our pockets, it doesn’t register.

What you do is your call. My goal is to use as little Google as I can get away with. If they want my data without resistance, they can make me an offer. Until then, I fence with the heads and tentacles of the data hydra, and for the most part, I think I win.

Investing, Social comment

Most precious metal bugs don’t even believe their own philosophy

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It’s a beautiful day: silver and gold are burning. I believe that a reasonable price for silver is $12-15/oz, and that gold is reasonable at $600/oz. I don’t care what Mr. Market says; Mr. Market is an idiot. Don’t try and tell me how Mr. Market is wise, swift and sure, all hail Mr. Market. When some money market funds broke the buck, panicked investors fled to safe havens: to money market funds! That’s what an idiot Mr. Market is.

Would you like to know how to tell if a precious metal hoarder really believes his or her own philosophy? Most don’t believe theirs. Many bought piles of gold at $1800/oz and silver at $40/oz. The enormity of those prices tells me that the reason was not long-term profit, but fear of some Grand Calamity. I’ve had the same discussion with many of them, and I’ll share it with you.

PMB: *grumble grumble* “I don’t trust any banks or any government or any anything. It’s all going to hell. I’m going with gold and silver, it’s the only thing you can count on.” *mutter mutter about socialism*

Me (drawling a bit): “Okay. Mind if I ask you a question or two about your philosophy?”

“Okay, sure.”

“Cool. First off: are you still putting money in a 401K?”

“Well, of course! The job matches my contributions and I get a tax benefit!”

“Seriously. So you believe everything is going splat, but you still put money into this. You don’t even believe your own philosophy.”

Or, they may answer: “Hell, no! None of that is going to be around!”

Me: “Makes sense. I don’t have an issue with anyone’s philosophy as long as they believe it. So you are loading up on metals; fair enough. Without being specific, of course, can you tell me where the metal is, very generally?”

“Well, I bought it through Edward Jones.”

“Really. So you don’t even have possession of it?”

“Would you want all that in your house? Criminals are getting bolder every damn day! Anyone who isn’t afraid is an idiot!”

“Really. So in your apocalyptic scenario, with civil disorder and everything in collapse, you truly think you are going to be able to go down to your local Edward Jones office. And the pleasant receptionist is going to be at work, smiling, ‘Yes, Mr. Smith, right away, Mr. Smith.’ You do not even believe your own philosophy.”

Or, they might respond: “I got it at the metal trading place, and it’s in my safe deposit box.”

Me: “You’re serious? So let’s draw this all in a picture. It’s the day of the Great Collapse. You need your gold! And you imagine that you’re going to go down to your B of A branch and the smiling teller will gladly let you into the vault. What are you going to do when you find out that, under martial law, there’s a platoon of the regular Army guarding it with automatic rifles and fixed bayonets? ‘The bank is closed, sir. Please step back to the sidewalk.’ ‘But you don’t understand! I need my damn gold and silver!’ ‘Sir, this property is under martial law. I have authority to use deadly force. Now please step back to the sidewalk, or lay down on the ground with your hands clearly visible. I would rather not use that deadly force.’ You don’t even believe your philosophy.”

Or, they might respond: “Well, I’ve got it in a few locations, easily landmarked. All of them are within a day’s hike of each other, none are subject to being in the same nuclear blast, and none are endangered by significant natural disasters like floods.”

Me: “Okay. Sounds like you’ve thought this through. Just out of curiosity, what’d you buy?”

“Mostly 1-oz Krugerrands and 10-oz bars.”

“Seriously. So, how many cattle can you pasture at once in your yard?”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Suppose we are on this post-apocalyptic barter economy and you want to use your metal to trade for stuff. How easy do you think it will be to make honest change using big gold to buy small amounts of food from farmers and ranchers? How fast do you think your stock of gold coins will evaporate at that rate? You really have not thought this through.”

Now and then I’ll meet someone who truly has thought it through. “I bought old US gold coins which were worn, selling close to melt, and a bunch of old US junk silver. Rolls and rolls of 1964 dimes, quarters, halves. Some wartime silver nickels. If things go to hell, I can barter and preserve my resources. If they don’t, what the hell; I can become a coin collector and hang onto some of the value.”

Me: “Okay. Then you’re doing the right thing for you. I hope it doesn’t all fall apart, but if it does, you’ve at least thought about what it’d mean. Good luck.”

Those are rare.

Adventures, Human relations, Social comment

A European’s guide to podunk American café dining

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If you’re from Europe (including the UK; if Cuba counts as Latin American, you count as European), and you visit the United States as it was meant to be visited, you will drive across some emptinesses. You will get hungry, and there won’t be many restaurants. While passing through Marmot Creek, West Dakota or Beauregard, East Carolina, you will get hungry enough to stop and eat in a podunk (small-town) café.

Americans will tell you, over and over, that podunk little diners are always the best places to eat. It’s not true. Some of them are great, some are all right, and some need to be closed down–and probably would be, if there were anywhere else in town to eat, and if small-county administrations and health departments weren’t so corrupt in general. Most podunk diners have kind, friendly people and decent food, but some have surly crabby types and haphazard food. I grew up in Kansas and have traveled by road around a lot of the country, so I have visited many such places. I’m here to help you have a good experience.

To have a good experience, you’re going to have to get over some things that may be quite alien to you, but don’t affect you too much. Let’s make a list:

  • The likelihood that some of the patrons are armed. With live ammunition–stuff that would get you arrested at once at home, and sent to counseling or something. Many of us are used to it, but I understand you probably aren’t.
  • The near-certainty that no one in the cafe speaks your native language (including British English), can name your country’s leader, or could even find the nation on a globe. (Don’t feel bad; they don’t speak their own native language well, they can’t name their Congressthief, and they would be hard pressed to find their own nation’s capital on a globe. If we can’t be multilingual, we can be multi-ignorant.)
  • Belying the stereotype of us as loud, vapid grinners, in some parts of the country no one is smiling like an imbecile, nor raising their voice. We act worse abroad than at home. This may mess with your perceptions.
  • A lot of the food is fried, and definitely would not get your cardiologist’s seal of approval. You should brace for a crise de foie.
  • To them, football is played by people wearing helmets who want to crush each other; far as they’re concerned, the version where you can’t touch the ball with your hands is for people afraid of properly violent combat.
  • In most cases, you stand out as if covered in neon lights proclaiming your Euroness, so expect to be noticed even before you say anything. That’s okay. What matters is what you do with it.
  • Nothing is, or will be, the way you are used to it. More to the point, the phrase “it should be this way” is fruitless. In fact, ‘should’ is generally fruitless. You are better off dealing with ‘is’ and ‘is not’ than ‘should’ and ‘should not.’ Should I have been able to flush the toilet paper in Greece? Doesn’t matter what I think. One can’t, and that’s that.
  • Every American in the café is absolutely convinced that his or her country is the greatest and strongest in all world history, and that the world wants only to be just like them, and that if you don’t have Jesus, you are for sure destined for eternity in Hell. If you plan to argue openly with them on any of these points, my advice is ‘don’t go.’ I happen to agree with you that they are wrong on absolutely every count, but my agreement changes nothing. This is what is.

You can get over these. Or not, if having a good time is less important than feeling superior. They’re ready for either way, and thus they do not care which stance you adopt, as you’re going to be interesting either way. Thus, it begins with making some acceptance of these differences, or at least not stressing over them. The ideal approach would be an open mind and good cheer, if you packed that.

Now that you got over the rough stuff, let’s talk about the stuff you’ll like:

  • They value courtesy, if it’s honest and not forced. Good manners, especially toward elders, will warm everyone who sees them, and will generally be shown to you.
  • None of them plan to pull out the guns, much less use them. They are armed; they aren’t stupid or mean. The people who use guns in insane fashion aren’t tolerated here; realize also that if they did so in such a place, someone’s in a position to put a stop to that. You’re very safe.
  • Most are warm-hearted and kind, even if gruff. If you were stuck along the road with a flat tire, or any other problem, most would stop and help you without a second thought. If you were lost, most would take the time to lead you back to your intended path. If you tried to pay them, you would offend them beyond measure; they did it out of kindness, desiring no recompense. Given any excuse, they mean you well.
  • They may be ignorant as all hell, and often tactless (“Germany? Is that so! My grandaddy was in Germany, he helped liberate some concentration camp named Byoukenwald or Ossawich. Said it was real bad.”), but they are interested in what brought you to their town. They have ideas for things for you to see and experience. You may find yourself having a very nice conversation.
  • They can tell if you relax. If you relax, they relax. That’s just human nature. You have it in your power to put the situation at ease. They tend to be curious about outsiders, but not fundamentally suspicious in most places.
  • They have no expectations of dress, other than that you not show up nude. Come as you are. They judge people more on behavior than fashion.

Sizing up cafés like a native

Okay. You just pulled into Varmint Flats, Wyorado, hungry enough that your arm is starting to look appetizing sautéed in garlic butter, and there is only one café in sight. The building looks old and kind of rundown. There are four pickup trucks and two passenger cars parked outside, all with Wyorado license plates. A couple of them have political stickers hating liberals and heckling Obama (our political right is your equivalent of a fascist religious party; our political left is your moderate right wing; we don’t have a left wing at all, as you define the term), liking Jesus, or adoring country music. Should you be worried?

Nah. But you should check it out, and here is my method. Park and go inside, glance around. Ignore the dead animal heads on the wall, and count the number of calendars hanging on it. More is better. Try for a four-calendar place, ideally five or six. Two is lame. I learned this from reading William Least Heat-Moon’s books, and he’s right. Then (noting the sign that says you can sit wherever you like) hang back just a moment to see if the waitress greets you. She is probably named Rhonda, and addresses you as ‘hon’ or ‘sugar’ or ‘sweetie’, exactly as tradition specifies. If Rhonda has kind eyes and seems friendly, she sets that tone for the entire diner. If it has no calendars, or Rhonda seems indifferent and crabby, or you just get a creepy nasty feeling, move on. I know it’s your habitual mealtime, and the world will end if you do not eat precisely at half seven, but you’ll survive to the next town.

Getting acquainted

Okay, you are satisfied with the calendars and waitress and overall feel, and you sit down. If they have a breakfast bar (and they all do), sit up there on one of the barstools; this is a gesture of sociability. Tell Rhonda ‘howdy.’ As soon as she hears your accent, she’ll ask where you’re from, what brings you to this part of the world, general small talk. Just explain that you’re exploring the USA, and wanted to get away from big cities and see the good parts. Everyone who hears that will warm a bit, because they are all convinced (as am I, doubly so after sixteen years living in one) that our big cities are barbarous, rude, fast-talking places full of sin and sneaky car thieves. Plus, it may even be true–this may really be why you’re passing through. But even if it’s not, it’s okay to fib a little.

Socially, it is now permissible and normal for anyone in the diner to initiate conversation with you (easier at the breakfast bar). They think you are glad to be there, and are not judging them, so it would be bad manners for them to start judging you. With few exceptions, they won’t know anything about your country of origin, but they’ll know a lot about their own area. Ask for suggestions on what to see. Ask if there’s a high school sports event going on today–high school sports are as much a civic pastime in small town America as church. If there is one, consider attending: you will see the real America. (I would support the home team if I were you. In winter it might be basketball, which you actually understand.) Ask where the worst speed traps are; avoiding these is one of our national pastimes. Ask about local wildlife, the area’s industries or agriculture, scenic attractions, historical sites and curiosities.

Say nothing about religion or politics, even if they bring it up (some jackass often does). You can’t have a good result from discussing those. (Yes, it is the precise opposite of Europe, where the visiting American immediately becomes held to account by all s/he meets for everything wrong his or her country has done, and is pitied as a hopeless fool if he or she says “Sorry, not into politics.”) If some pushy slob asks why you don’t talk about it, tell them that you read a blog that said, “Any European who comes into a small American town and gets involved in talking religion or politics is a moron. I don’t want to be a moron.” They know that’s true, so it should break the ice and make them laugh, deftly evading a pitfall.

Don’t take offense if people ask you what work you do for a living. This is customary, unlike many parts of the world where it is unbearably rude. At least you can be sure they will not ask how much money you earn, for in the United States, that question is as rude as asking Rhonda her age. Need a WC/toilet? If you can’t spot the sign indicating the toilets, ask Rhonda for the restroom (if you’re male) or the ladies’ room (if female). Some places just have a unisex private restroom. Just don’t ask her for the toilets, even though that’s obviously what you want. If you ask for the washroom, like Canadians do, Rhonda won’t understand. If you ask for the WC, Rhonda will wonder what W.C. Fields has to do with diners.

Most of your jokes aren’t funny to Americans (not offensive, just that they won’t see what’s funny). Most of ours probably aren’t funny to you either, since most of ours aren’t very funny to begin with. Chuckling anyway would be appropriate, unless it’s a racist joke, or otherwise deeply offensive. There’s a species of bigoted redneck, I’m afraid, who cannot resist making offensive statements just to make outsiders squirm. In that case, I’d just not laugh, and move on to another topic, since you can’t win a debate. There’s no other good option.

Expect Westerners and upper Midwesterners to be a little more taciturn and less smiley, which does not mean they are not warm and kind; they are just less demonstrative about it. Expect Southerners and lower Midwesterners to be more outwardly friendly and approachable. They aren’t really very different; it just looks and sounds that way.

Customs

Unless told otherwise, anyone you reckon is old enough to be your parent, call ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am.’ Never mind that they don’t much do it among themselves; they all know each other. However, don’t do it (or anything else) with stiff formality. Also, when greeting someone, don’t say ‘hello’ or ‘hullo’. Practice the word: ‘Howdy.’ If you smile and say ‘howdy’ to people you meet, you cannot fail. Yeah, I know it sounds like a bad cowboy movie. Take my word: if you manage to have a hard time in a small American town when you smile and say ‘howdy’ to people, that’s a real bad town, and other Americans are also eager avoid such a churlish dump. This is not to say you should attempt to adopt a rural accent in your accented English, as a good Swedish friend of mine is always tempted to do. You will sound mocking. It’s okay if you sound foreign and basically British. That’s being your authentic self, which they respect.

Hold doors for people when it seems natural, especially elders, especially women. Remember also that we are a people with a lot of room to maneuver (the way some of us eat, we need it), and we need a good reason to intrude on anyone else’s personal space. Thank Rhonda for bringing you things, even though this is stupid, since it’s her job to do that. Doesn’t matter; it’s the custom and she expects it, and thinks you are rude if you do not. If a man puts out his hand, shake it firmly and look him in the eye. If a woman puts out her hand to shake, do what I do: dread it. Some of them worked in sales, and they shake hands just as men are expected to do. Others just sort of hang down their fingers and you’re supposed to grasp them briefly. If you are a woman, you are safe, because men typically will not reach out to shake your hand (we dread it, and it’s not good manners), and women will do whatever women do (I’m not in a position to know those subtleties). I can only speak with surety about man to man: we expect the other man to meet our eyes and shake firmly. Men who shake weakly, or without eye contact, are registered as weak. Men who try to crush your hand are registered as bullies compensating for small penises. Unfortunately, there are some of those in rural America. Pretend it didn’t hurt.

Menu choices

For breakfast, they usually have some good omelets. I suggest a Spanish or taco omelet, out west. Anywhere else, pancakes are a good bet. In the South, they will bring grits unless you plead with them not to. Ask Rhonda what she likes to put on her grits, and try them that way. They’re still lousy, but don’t tell Rhonda that (a serious faux pas). One of the tribulations of breakfast in the South is that you have to eat and pretend to like your grits. Don’t ask if they have quiche, or what kind of cheese they use. Such petty questions will mark you as a snooty city slicker; this is a country diner, not a food boutique. Biscuits and gravy are a staple, and taste better than you imagine.

For lunch, sandwiches are usually pretty good, especially reubens and patty melts. Don’t ask if they have arugula salad; they might think it’s the Latin name for some internal organ. If you want to make everyone laugh (even kindly Rhonda), eat your French fries with a fork, smearing ketchup on them individually with a knife. A French couple I dined with actually did this. It won’t offend the onlookers, but expect to get kidded about it. If you are kidded about anything, laugh along. They kid each other, so if they kid you, it’s because they like you and are showing you acceptance. In any case, take my word that in the United States you are allowed to eat your fries with your hands. If you want vinegar for them, they probably have some. Rhonda will think it’s funny, but she won’t mind.

If it’s dinner, I’d avoid the liver and onions unless you’re up for a cultural experience. Steaks at diners are often surprisingly lousy for the price. They usually do a great job with chicken, though, and anything that says barbecue or BBQ is probably excellent. I realize that in Europe, maize (which we call corn; if you ask for maize, Rhonda will look at you as if you were an extra-terrestrial) is animal fodder, but you might be surprised how good it is with butter. When in doubt, ask Rhonda what is the best thing on the menu. She knows what the cook does well, and what he does badly, and what takes forever. Trust her.

Should you happen to have ‘saved room for dessert,’ as Rhonda will probably ask you, my advice is to go with pie. Ask her which pie is most popular. She probably baked it herself. In fact, in some small diners, she’s also your cook for everything. If there is one art that is done spectacularly well in small-town America, it is pie. However, you probably won’t have room for dessert because American portions are very large. If you are too full, Rhonda understands and isn’t hurt.

Leaving

When you’re ready to pay and leave, tip Rhonda 15-20%, minimum $2. Europeans are terrible tippers, but the good news is that Rhonda has hardly met any Europeans, so she doesn’t know that. Over 20% implies that you feel sorry for the poor country people, and is thus too much. Under 15% implies that you’re a cheap bastard. If you use a credit card–if they take cards–you can put it on the card, though Rhonda will be happier if you tip in cash because then she can avoid some of the tax. If you pay cash, set the tip in a discreet spot on the table. Rhonda lives on tips; in most states, she gets about 1/3 of the normal minimum hourly wage. She gets taxed on her tips as if they were all at least 9% of the check, so if she gets less than that, it stings both her pride and her budget. Rhonda probably has three children and her ex-husband is probably behind on his child support, and she works hard and tries to smile even when she’s had a bad day. Unless she did a very lousy job, she deserves a decent tip.

Exchange brief goodbyes with everyone you spoke with, and let them know you’re glad you stopped there, thanking them for any guidance they offered. No need to be ostentatious, but if you conversed with people, it is against custom to leave without acknowledging them. Wish Rhonda a good day/evening, or if it’s Friday, a good weekend. If anyone encourages you to ‘come back any time,’ or says ‘hope to see you again sometime,’ you should believe him or her. Yes, I know that you have heard and read a great deal about our vapid casual superficiality, where we supposedly mean nothing we say. This is an exception. We only say that when we truly want to make the point that we enjoyed visiting with you. If this occurs, you are mastering the art of Being European In Rural America.

Summary

If I had to summarize the key to good dining experiences in small town America, I’d say the key is to relax and not be afraid. Unless you’re rude to them, they mean you well. They hope you will tell people what a nice town it was, and that its people are pleasant. Just avoid a few taboos, trust your instincts, and you’ll find that eating is part of the American exploration adventure. After a few experiences, you’ll start to get good at this, and you’ll be looking forward to the next one.

Entertainment and music, Social comment

Hell’s Kitchen with Gordon Ramsay: a culinary Kobayashi Maru

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You all saw at least that much of the Star Trek movie in question, right? The Kobayashi Maru was a Starfleet simulator exercise meant to be unsolvable. The trainee could not win. The point was to see how s/he lost. I think that’s what Gordon Ramsay’s about on Hell’s Kitchen, his reality show whereby supposedly the winner gets to be head chef at one of his restaurants. (In reality, not so much. In reality, there’s a good chance that the winner will be more or less kept to the side at the restaurant and advised not to get in the way of the professionals.)

The main purpose, of course, is manufacturing entertainment; let us not self-deceive. Contestants are chosen not for ability to cook, but for likely personality conflict and entertainment value. Several are certain flameouts, and the game will be rigged to keep them around causing drama, conflict and meltdown. Hollywood is in the business of lying to you, and that’s actually praise for its skill; no, Tom Hanks wasn’t actually stuck on an island with a ball, but Hollywood used masterful skill to make it seem like he was. Let us just be realistic, and say without rancor that Hollywood is so much in the business of lying that the idea of truth mattering isn’t part of the game. Expecting it to value truth is rather like expecting major bank CEOs to place value on the public good, or putting an alligator with your chickens and expecting it not to eat them. What the hell did you expect?

Other deceptions include frankenbites (they can, do and will actually make it so you ‘said’ whatever they want), the fact that the whole thing is just a sound stage and that all the ‘diners’ are human props from the industry, and that Ramsay’s not a good tycoon restauranteur. His real-world restaurants keep eating flaming death, so to speak, financially, which suggests that he’s a great cook who could probably win the game running one or three restaurants. One cannot imagine that strong, confident people sit close to his throne and take the kind of abuse he slings on the show, so either we’re being put on and he’s great at pretending to be a complete jerk, or he perhaps has the flaw of hiring only people who will put up with inordinate crap (skill being a secondary hiring concern). That’s what insufferable employers end up with: the few whose main qualification is abuse tolerance. I’ve seen whole companies where that was the key trait for survival.

If it weren’t mostly fiction dressed up to look like reality, reality shows would not need draconian confidentiality agreements in which participants agree to be parted out for transplant organs, caned daily by professional Singaporean caners, forced to watch Honey Boo Boo Clockwork Orange-style, and pay $5 billion in restitution if they reveal the truth.

So Ramsay puts roughly eight males and eight females, all opinionated, boastful, overconfident, foulmouthed, mostly fat, mostly eccentric chain-smokers (in other words, restaurant cooks) onto two teams divided by gender (thus destroying the natural balance of complementary gender traits). He then gets them up at boot camp hours to perform challenges that may sometimes mean zero to the culinary art, but will be funny to watch, such as tackling pigs. The losing side gets some charming penalty, something like ‘scrub spotless the inside of the trash dumpster behind the homeless shelter,’ and of course has to prep both kitchens. The winning side gets pampered, though in one case they were forced to meet Celine Dion without pointing out that she couldn’t sing, which I wouldn’t call pampering.

Obviously, the show has little to do with finding the best chef. If it did, they would not cast prep cooks and fry cooks and line cooks and culinary students and others who, sweating and shirtless, shovel coal into the boilers of the world of dining. (Now picture all the current contestants as stokers on the Titanic. You’re welcome.) The very worst thing about the show’s editing is Fox’s shameless cliffhangering, which seems done by a 12-year-old to appeal to 10-year-olds. You always expect the trashiest of trashy from Fox, and they do not fail to disappoint here. Lots of “My decision is…” [commercial break] and plenty of “The person leaving Hell’s Kitchen is…” [to be continued]. Fox: always low standards. Always.

We don’t see something like 95% of what goes on, but what is weird: even through the deception, contrived stress, and all the other stuff that’s hardly relevant to deciding who can cook and who can lead, Ramsay does accomplish one thing. He does find out who can face stress and keep cool enough to continue trying to retrieve the situation. I can grant that a chef might need that property above many others. In at least this one way, his culinary Kobayashi Maru seems to serve one authentic purpose.

Other than that, well, entertaining bullshit remains bullshit. And yes, I admit to watching it. There are worse character flaws.

Investing, Social comment

Why I don’t believe in ethical investing

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Considering how I feel about many major corporations, it might be shocking to hear that I have zero compunction about profiting from their stock. None. Monsanto, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Toyota, whoever–I don’t care about their sins in this context.

Why? Because my reason for investing is to make money.

I believe that investing to bring about social change is just fine, if you think it through; however, then acknowledge to yourself that this abandons moneymaking as the primary purpose, and don’t complain when you take a bath because your eco-friendly investment rolled over and threw up again. Personally, I think you could do more to bring about social change by sending charitable contributions to well-investigated causes, but hey, it’s your money.

Mine will be invested for profit, and for no other purpose. That is the game as defined by the market, and the laudable goal as defined by our broad social consensus.  I did not design this game. Were it up to me, a whole lot of corporations would be running very scared, but it isn’t.

The individual investor in the marketplace, which is heavily rigged by the big guys, is like the new and friendless inmate in a major maximum security prison. He did not design the prison, with its gangs, variably-ethical guards, drugs and hazards, but it’s where he is. He can either spend a lot of time trying to effect ‘change’ against a tide like they get in the Bay of Fundy–and get nowhere–or he can figure out how to find some comfort, learn to do time. He may have to do things he’d never have considered on the outside, associate with the worst scum in society. He may have no choice. As with combat veterans, it’s not sensible to lecture him on morals if one hasn’t been there, felt what he felt, seen what he saw.

But how can you stand to own stock in Unislime (NASDAQ:UNSL), which treats its workers like Michael Vick treated dogs, pays them almost enough to buy one Taco Bell meal a day if they don’t pay rent, and last year gave the CEO a $4 trillion bonus while laying off the entire populations of five impoverished Appalachian cities? I won’t say that I feel moral joy owning UNSL shares, though it makes me economically joyous if it’s up 14% this year and coughed up a 3.5% dividend. (Once I sell it, it’s welcome to jump off a bridge, so I can buy it again real cheap.) Remember: there is no such thing as shares which are sold but not bought. I could dump UNSL, and someone else would own it. My selling would have the infinitesimal impact of driving the current share price down a tiny notch for a brief half-second, it is true, but the share price overall is based on market perceptions, the greatest percentage of which come from mutual and hedge fund managers. If a $12B mutual fund owns 5% of UNSL, and decides the stock has reached its target price, it will start selling and the stock will go down. Whether I own fifty shares of UNSL, or someone else does, will have no measurable effect on anything.

Haven’t you ever heard of shareholder activism? I have not only heard of it, I have engaged in it with some malicious glee. It works like this: every year, corporations hold shareholder meetings. Inevitably, some shareholder proposals make it onto the ballot for voting. Management invariably recommends a vote against all shareholder proposals and in favor of all its nominees, policy changes and so on. You can bet that if I get my UNSL shareholder ballot, and I see that a coalition of nuns has proposed something deeply idealistic and completely loopy, they have my vote just because that’s fun for me. I myself do not take shareholder activism seriously, because the only reason I own the stock is because I think it will make me money. Others feel differently, and consider it a powerful weapon. Good for them, but that is investing for social change. I’m investing for profit, and profit alone. Any satisfaction I get from doing something management won’t like is a minor bonus.

But you’re supporting Unislime by owning its stock! Your money is blood money! Eeeeeeeeeeeek! Icky! In order: not true, just sounds like it should be; yes, as is most of the money made in the market; stop screaming; no money is icky.

As mentioned before, someone’s going to own UNSL. Might be Unislime itself, using its cash reserves for a big stock buyback. My ownership or non-ownership is not itself support; that assertion is mindless and disintegrates under scrutiny. My ownership just means I own some phantom pieces of paper representing a little chunk of UNSL. Voting for Unislime’s paid Congresspeople–that is support. Did you stop to check on that before you marked your November ballot? Also, do you own a 401K? Does it own mutual fund shares? Do you check rigorously to see if any of your funds own UNSL? Do you even know how to find that out? If you have an employer-sponsored retirement account, you probably own UNSL shares indirectly, or stocks of even more odious corporations. Most of the large ones are so unscrupulous that ‘ethical investing’ would be problematic anyway, especially considering how much we do not know. Most of them would be out of bounds. CEOs are paid to increase shareholder value, not be ethical.

It’s much easier for a corporation to be ethical when it’s not publicly traded. A very good friend of mine works for such a firm in Portland. He tells me, and I believe him, that his company has very high ethics toward the communities in which it does business. Fantastic! I’d want to work for an outfit like that, and I’d love to own stock if it would make me money. But I can’t buy their stock, and unless I need teeth for my earthmoving equipment, I’m not in a position to steer them any business. I respect them and their business practices, and I hope they prosper handily, but they are not germane to my own investing.

So, it’s pretty hard to do any investing at all without profiting from the profit of a company who earned it by working to someone’s disadvantage. It is to the company’s advantage to sell goods and services at the highest possible profit, which usually means paying employees less, offering fewer benefits, and gouging consumers to the highest possible degree. Publicly traded companies answer to shareholders, and shareholders demand value. That’s just how the game works. And as before, if you buy mutual funds, unless you do a pretty thorough walkthrough of their portfolios, odds are you are building your Sun City sunset years nest egg on ‘icky’ blood money. You can face that with eyes open, or pretend it’s not so, or choose to invest for social change rather than financial gain. We all have to be comfortable with our financial plans. Mine are to make money, and devil take the hindmost.

This all sounds like a big rationalization to liberate you from ethical considerations. For starters, I don’t believe I’m obligated to ethical considerations in what is essentially a free-for-all where the biggest players just laugh at the concept of ‘ethical considerations.’ I’ve never seen evidence that my owning or not owning a stock affected the business outcome. My stance is that the vast majority of people invest for the same reasons I do, deep down, but that some are not self-honest about it. If you do not believe in owning certain types of shares, and you fail to review the portfolios of all the mutual funds you profit from, you aren’t self-honest about it. I prefer to apply my ethical considerations in areas where I feel I make a true difference: recycling, shopping local, supporting deserving causes. I have never had a charity interrogate me to ask whether my contribution was ‘blood money.’

I’m a Muslim. I invest only in funds that are consistent with Islamic principles. Some years, that’s turned out very well for you financially. I’m not a Muslim, and I considered buying a couple of the Amana funds myself–because I don’t care what the fund stands for, just whether or not it makes me money. There are plenty of funds whose charters are based around ethical notions, be they Islamic, Christian, environmental, fair trade, no sin stocks, no defense/guns, what have you. Sometimes you’ll do pretty well. But tell yourself the truth: You are investing with a social (religious) agenda that trumps the profit motive. If that’s how you must invest in order to feel okay about your money, as before, best of luck. I don’t think less of you for it, unless you get self-righteous with me without being self-honest.

This sounds so Randroid. Haven’t I heard you say more than once that you find her ridiculous? And you’ll hear it again. Here’s a logic trap I believe in avoiding: eschewing an idea because some jackass also happens to share or advocate it. I can’t say whether Ayn Rand would approve of my investing notions, but I’m not investing to annoy or please a dead priestess of avarice. I’m investing to make money. No matter what your idea or view is, on any topic, you can find a complete scoundrel who advocates the same. Stalin had a draft; if you support conscription, does that associate you with Stalin? Jefferson owned slaves; if you admire his Constitutional concepts, does that mean you advocate slavery? It’s silliness to think so.

This whole greedy attitude is what’s wrong with America. Be the change you want to see. Nobly motivated, but you’re spending too much time addressing the wrong person. I didn’t design this prison; the gangs and the hacks have all the power here, and I have to live in reality. How about instead asking your legislators to be said change, since they’re the prison guards turning a blind eye to real wrongdoing? As demonstrated before, what I do with my investment capital will effect no social change, because what shares I do not own, someone else will. I can make my way within reality, or let it crush me without even noticing or caring. If I do, of course, I have less ability to effect other change. Take a look at Bill Gates, who made most of his money providing uncreative bloatware while assimilating or destroying most of what was better (and nearly everything else was). Now he’s giving most of the icky money away. You can argue that all of his money is filthy, if you believe there is such a thing. You cannot successfully argue that he is misusing his gains. He’s using them so honorably that Warren Buffett is just going to send all his money (a great buttload) to Bill.

Furthermore, this greedy attitude is America. Has been since the first Europeans showed up. The modern nation’s vast wealth was created through grants and exploitation of free real estate by pushing aside, confining or killing its original owners, whose descendants still aren’t getting a fair shake. Much of the initial labor was provided by slaves or indentured servants, many of whom shared in none of the rewards during their lifetimes, and whose descendants likewise still aren’t getting a fair shake. You may like this truth or loathe it, but it is reality. Unless you own nothing in the United States, or are prepared to surrender all that you own here because its economic base was gained through injustice, you’re a participant at some remove. Greed, and taking from others, made it all possible. Either none of the money is icky, or it’s all been icked out for centuries.

I don’t believe in small feelgood gestures that do no good. If you want to do some good, get out there and do some. You don’t need money to do that, but if you invest purely for profit–even in UNSL and its ilk–you may obtain greater means to do that.

Plus, look on the bright side. How good will it feel to make a bunch of money off UNSL, then dump it, and wait and watch smugly as it tanks later on? Even the ethical investing crowd has to like that.